Call the Spirit DragonsCall the Spirit Dragons | Art by Liiga Smilshkalne

Hello, and welcome to How To Be New, where I give a new player's perspective on how to start playing Commander before the cactuscactus makes everyone quit.

As this series makes the jump from Commander's Herald to EDHREC proper, this week's article addresses both new and veteran players, and it concerns my biggest, most persistent frustration since beginning my journey into Commander last October.

Okay, so Tarkir: Dragonstorm has just come out. The new set takes place on the plane of Tarkir, a place where a lot of things have happened in Magic's history. For instance, Spice8Rack, one of my favorite MTG YouTubers, has a four-hour-long video about Tarkir. Now, Spice has been known to run long, but their videos usually (and by "usually" I mean "always") end up much shorter than that.

Suffice it to say that Tarkir is an important place for Magic players. From what I gleaned from Spice's video (which I had open on my second monitor as I grinded daily MTG Arena quests), a lot of the things in Tarkir have to do with five Clans. Each of these Clans are associated with a combination of three of Magic's five colors of mana, and the names of these Clans, first introduced in 2014, are still used as shorthand by many Magic players when describing these combinations of colors.

This is a mistake.

For you, a new player who still groups your lands in a way that feels inefficient but that you don't know how to improve upon, these color combination names are absolute gibberish, and why wouldn't they be?! The other five three-color combos were named in a different set in 2008! And the ten two-color combos were named all the way back in 2005, when planeswalkers were still just a glint in Mark Rosewater's eye.

Between all of those, that's 20 unhinged words to have to learn, plus the four four-color combo names (you thankfully don't hear them as much, and honestly, just based on word count alone, those I actually am fine with abbreviating). That's too much information to be expected to learn, especially considering you're supposed to learn it alongside at least one 100-card (without repeats!) deck, plus the most frequent cards played by other players, plus so many different mechanics. It's like studying for the ACT, but somehow more useful.

Any veteran players reading may be surprised to hear this, but please do hear these words: the color combination names are the hardest thing to learn as a new player, especially because very often they're said casually in conversation without an actual card on hand that one could actually look at for reference. By the time your brain has processed the sounds you've made into an unfamiliar word which you find yourself unable to derive further meaning from, the conversation has long moved on. It's truly like hearing another language. Or the word "nonplussed." It's a conversational stun counter for new players.

To tell you the truth, the two-color pairings are much more palatable for me. Maybe it's because they're just so well-written to convey the general vibe of the pairing they represent. Across the board they have a real Bouba/Kiki thing going on. Izzet sounds like the aggressive chaos of . Boros sounds warm but regal in a very sort of way. Golgari () sounds like the exact noise Swamp Thing would make. They're perfect.

As a newer player, those two-color names will be some of the first things you pick up. You'll definitely learn the name for the color identity of your first couple of decks. But past that, you might as well make flash cards. Or just ignore them until you pick them up through osmosis... which I assume must happen at some point? Unless every veteran Commander player actually did make flash cards... which, I mean, I wouldn't put it past them. I firmly believe that if Wizards released a card which required the player to recite a Shakespearean soliloquy for three free mana, we'd all know "To be, or not to be" as well as we know "Do you pay the one?"

So I say all of this, not just to provide you a warm, comforting blanket over your shoulders after you've gone numb at hearing the word "Jund" one too many times, but because Tarkir: Dragonstorm is here, and with it, an unprecedented chance to internalize some of these color combinations. Because I've been playing Commander for six months now, and "just picking them up as I go along" has not been cutting it.

Check out your local game store for any leftover prerelease kits. There are five different kinds, each of which relate to one of the three-color Clans in Tarkir. Each box will contain an extra pack of cards specific to the color combination you've selected, and given that I can identify Temur () since I play a commander in that color combination; I should know Grixis , which accounts for two of my Commander decks, but it simply doesn't stick in my brain; I guess "Temur" is more fun, and I can associate it more closely with my boi Flubs, the FoolFlubs, the Fool than I can associate "Grixis" with these two absoluteabsolute bastardsbastards) maybe this will help you get one or two of these crazy combo names down.

So keep faith, friends. You may not know all these gibberish color words, but as long as you're learning to say "Swords to PlowsharesSwords to Plowshares" with a confident yet conciliatory tone, then your Commander education is coming along just fine.